Chinese Language Interference of Smart Vocational School Students in Written English

Abstract

This research aims at investigating and describing the interference of Chinese Language (L1) in Written English (L2) by Smart Vocational School Chinese Students. The present study is limited to the discussion of syntactic interference instead of others such as lexical, phonological, and discourse interference. Qualitative data were collected from ten Chinese students at Smart Vocational School. The data were analyzed by using Miles and Huberman theory – data collection, data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing. The findings of the present study are eight syntactic interferences occur in the English text written by Chinese students. They are the syntactic interference on parts of speech (noun, adjective, verb), syntactic interference on tense, syntactic interference on pronoun, syntactic interference on auxiliary, syntactic interference on article (definite and indefinite), syntactic interference on noun indicating possession, syntactic interference on noun plurality, and syntactic interference on impersonal ‘there’ as sentence subject. The interferences occur either as the L1 rule is applied in L2 or the deviation of L2 as its non-existence in L1.